HURT

At 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10

Live Wire Music Hall, 307 W. River St.

$12 advance, $14 day of show

Hurt is a pretty heavy rock ‘n' roll band from L.A. They've shared stages with the likes of Alice in Chains, Staind, Seether and Three Days Grace. You've heard their melodic, anthemic songs like "Ten Ton Brick" and "Falls Apart." Or the eerie "Rapture."

The band has a new album, The Crux, coming in April. However, the tour that brings them to Savannah is - contrary to the usual music biz promotion tactics -an all-acoustic affair.

"As musicians, it's important for us to keep reinventing ourselves, even if sometimes that means going back to the roots," says singer, songwriter and guitarist J. Loren Wince, who's playing more violin than guitar on this unique excursion.
"Most of these songs were written on acoustic instruments and it is one of the strengths of this band that I look forward to sharing."

Classical cellist Patrice Jackson has been added to Hurt's unplugged lineup. "As long as you bring your same vocabulary and your own technique," she told an interviewer, "you can pretty much do anything you want to do, and still make it your own." See hurtband.com.

BETSY KINGSTON AND THE CROWNS

At 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9

Live Wire Music Hall, 307 W. River St. With Byron Hatcher, Eddie the Whel

Also: At 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10

Molly Maguire's, 216 Johnny Mercer Blvd. (Wilmington Island)

Here's an early opportunity to check out one of the latest additions to the 2012 Savannah Stopover. Kingston, a current resident of Athens, is a Savannah native with a gritty, blues-rock voice and a satchel full of heavy and hard-hitting original tunes. The band includes her longtime musical partner Joseph Dinnan on electric and acoustic guitars, and a rotating cast of Athens' finest. After Stopover, they'll be on their way to play SXSW in Austin.

Betsy Kingston and the Crowns' just-out debut album, Blue Laws, was recorded in the same Five Points barn where REM and the B-52's scratched out their sound in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. See reverbnation.com/betsykingstoncrowns